My phone started having a bulge and glitching up, after overheating. So I decided to get a new phone. The phone seemed fine the day I got it (3 days ago), but today has crashed and started bootlooping (just keeps rebooting before I can get to the home screen).
The seller has no returns, and I don’t have a lot of money, but I didn’t care much because of eBay’s guarantee. The basic text is “Get the item you ordered or your money back—it’s that simple.”
Now I’m pretty sure eBay would get me my money back if I pressed. But should I? I can see arguments both ways, which I will spoiler. Please answer before reading them.
“Return” It
“Keep” It
0voters
Return it
An item that shows defects that soon is clearly already broken. And it is very likely it showed signs of such before the seller sent it, like rebooting randomly at other times. “No returns” can easily suggest they knew there was a problem.
And I just don’t have a lot of money to have to buy another phone again.
Friendly contact may have been to make me feel too guilty to use the Guarantee.
Keep It
The item was arguably as described, and the seller may not have had any way to know about any problems. Breaking the first time it was used may indicate damage, but this happened a few days in.
And how much money you should ideally have no bearing on what you should do.
Plus the guy contacted me and was friendly.
Note that, no matter how good your argument or overwhelming the results, I am not promising to follow it. This is just a poll to get information about what other people think, not to make the decision for me.
And, yes, I’m open to other options if you have them.
First, there’s no guarantee that eBay will come through. Their guarantees are nowhere as straightforward as returning something to Amazon or Best Buy, for example. If I were you, I’d contact the seller right away (if you haven’t already) and ask for a refund or exchange. If they don’t give you one, start the process with eBay ASAP because it will take a while for the dispute resolution process.
But definitely return it. A working phone, even used, should keep working for a very long time absent external damage, not infinitely reboot itself after a few days.
FWIW I would never order no-returns electronics from eBay. The four-way relationship between you, the seller, eBay, and your credit card company (or worse, PayPal) makes returns and chargebacks very complicated to deal with.
I did go ahead and do this. It sucks, since their last message was “I see you got the phone. I hope you enjoy it and Merry Christmas.” They aren’t some big seller or anything. Just some guy who used this phone for developing Android software. Even offered to install a different OS on it for me.
But you have a point about it not being right that it broke so soon, so I did mention that.
The seller probably didn’t realize that it was bad. I always give someone a chance not to be a dick. He may even have an easy solution for the problem that you can try.
If the seller says no returns, and if pressed you have to admit that it DID work normally for 3 days, I can see Ebay saying “Caveat emptor”. Former phone tech support guy, and I’ve seen brand new phones right out of the box screw up in that few days, and I’ve ALSO had people who swore that was the case, but when the return was processed had to reverse the credit, because there was water damage / physical damage / they had enabled “developer mode” and broke the OS.
Which is sounds like the later here. Which may or may not be an issue for Ebay or you, but would void the manufacturer’s and carriers warranty.
NOTE - I’m not saying you did any of the above @BigT! What I’m saying is that if they advertised “no returns” AND a different OS that those are both red flags to me at least. And Ebay may consider this the same.
But, I see no harm in asking the seller to make you whole. Try! But if he says and you admit it was working fine for a while, he can easily counter that You did something to it if he wants to be defensive. I doubt Ebay is going to do a professional examination of the device to find out what was going on either way.
Oh, for the record, LG (this is a decade ago mind you!) was infamous in our circles for going into perpetual boot loops with no rhyme or reason, even for undamaged stock OS phones. And it could be anytime, from a week to years later.
Surprisingly, the seller has already gotten back to me, despite it being so late for both of us.
They have given me some directions to try and resolve the issue and said that, if this doesn’t work, we will try to find another device to make me whole.
Thanks, guys. I wasn’t sure about what I should say to the seller.
First seller, then broker (in your case, eBay, as it seems they style themselves these days), then initiate a charge-back through the credit card company.
If item delivered is not as advertised, charge-back. 100%.
Well, just MHO, but I’d tell them with my wallet what they can do with their crap product.
Chargeback and then throw the thing in the trash. Maybe try to fix it…but not on my dime do I do a charity project.
Supposedly. How do you know this?
Sure.
It may be so that the seller is an innocent victim of circumstance, but whence the belief in this seller?
Product is bad, BigT doesn’t pay. End of story.
Well, that’s not bad if it’s just for a hobby kind of device.
Meh, seems you two agree with that result, and that you don’t need the device for any time-constrained purpose.
Sounds fine to me, if it’s just as a hobby for buyer and seller.
Yes, it’s always good to contact the seller first and try to work something out. Getting another working phone for you seems like a reasonable compromise if it’s similarly specced. Maybe you can pay for shipping.
eBay sellers live and die by their feedback. I’ve sold about 50 things on ebay, including several expensive electronics, and I would definitely try to work it out with the buyer if something like this happened – especially if the buyer has a reasonable feedback score too. Be nice and reasonable with the seller, but I don’t think you should just eat the loss and assume you did anything wrong. A phone is a lot of money and you want something reliable for your daily driver.
Hopefully you can work something out with the seller!
I am a pretty heavy eBay seller. Most are honest, as this one appears to be, and will work with you.
No, eBay will always side with the buyer and will indeed facilitate returns regardless of whether the seller “allows” them. Sellers do not even have a means to give a buyer a negative review.
Only new sellers. Once you have established yourself as a seller, a nick here and there is inevitable and meaningless.
If you said anything different, I’m sure the issuing bank would like to know about it.
The seller is the problem.
It’s great that the OP and this particular seller are fellow hobbyists and don’t particularly value their time, but many or most retail exchanges are not handled so well by a firm handshake and an afternoon tea at the nineteenth hole.
Permit me to doubt the absolute of always, because otherwise someone could make a TON of money by abusing the system. My experience is apparently more minimal than yours, but as mentioned upthread, I spent a couple years doing tech support for a major cell carrier.
At least once a week I fielded calls from customers who bought phones from private sellers on Ebay that a week to a few months later locked up on them. Because the phones weren’t fully paid off by the prior owner, and thus the carrier locked them. And all of them reported (granted, they may have been lying to try to get the carrier to cave) that Ebay wouldn’t do anything for them.
Again, they have every motivation to lie, and my personal Ebay purchases have always been for items in the sub-$10 range, so things may vary dramatically depending on the buyers and sellers credibility and the dollar value.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have written “always”. I always do that.
I’m not sure how long ago you worked tech support, but, over the years, eBay has shifted more and more toward supporting the buyer. Once they removed the ability for a seller to leave negative feedback on the buyer, the level of abuse has increased.
Eh, 10ish years, as mentioned above. And again, I do very little on Ebay, the wife a great deal more, but with low value items in a fan/collector community. So far more tight knit, shared interest, etc - a group that does a lot of freebies for fellow fans, and actually even do trades/follow ups.
And as I said, the people I personally were dealing with were out reasonably substantial cash (generally several hundred at least), very upset, and had incentive to lie. And, unlike our OP, I was convinced at least 90% of them knew that the deal was shady/too good to be true.
So far, the instructions seem to be working! I basically just reflashed the OS, using a website. I did a stress test, and no problems found so far.
Oh, and yes, I took the compassionate but firm approach. Saying I hated it, as I support small sellers and developers, but also mentioning that a “used” device should not break 4 days after receiving it. I told them I wanted to try and resolve it.
Hence the instructions I willingly followed that appear to have worked.
The phone works fine now, and I even stress tested it. So I told the seller that it was all fine. I went to go leave feedback on the sale and seller.
But I seem to be unable to do that? I go to give feedback, and the text box now says “Tell us more about this item. You could mention topics like: Quality Condition Value Appearance.”
Did eBay just screw up their feedback page, and that box is where you’re supposed to talk about the seller? Also, where is the box to mention that the seller had great communication?
I think that’s just the Feedback page these days. In olden times, you just clicked a star and wrote “BEST SELLER ON EBAAY A++++++++++++”, now they first ask you to assign ratings to various aspects of the item and seller and then you hold down the plus key for twenty seconds.
eBay is very slanted towards the buyer in transactions. To the point where a couple people I know who used to sell a lot on eBay won’t any longer because they’ve gotten scammed too many times. Like sending an old video game, then the buyer takes the disc out and reports they just got an empty case and eBay forces a refund under “Item Not As Described”. Or replaces the good item with a shitty one they own, etc.
Glad to hear things worked out. I don’t sell much on eBay but I’ve sold some PCs via FB Marketplace and would have felt terrible to know the buyer was disappointed or having problems. Thankfully, this seems to have been that kind of seller and not someone just out to make a quick buck on a faulty device.
